Amazon has released a new game engine, Lumberyard, for free. It allows developers to create games for all currently supported version of Windows, including Windows 10, along with Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

Microsoft has sent an email to Windows Store app developers, informing them that beginning in March the company will put in a 2.24% "Commerce Expansion Adjustment" for any app and in-app purchases that come from gift cards.

Microsoft continues to promote its Windows Bridge for iOS tools with a short developer tutorial that shows how to create a simple app in Xcode and then use the bridge to convert it into a Windows 10 app.

Microsoft has begun rolling out an update to the Windows Store Dev Center that gives app publishers that's simplifies the process of setting up age ratings. The new system automatically adds the age ratings and certificates for each market.

Microsoft is very pleased with how the app store is growing since the launch of Windows 10, and it pledges to offer app developers more and better support in 2016 with additional features and improvements to the store.

Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft's Developer Evangelism head, stated in a new interview that he believes the recent burst of new universal Windows 10 apps will continue, stating, "It takes a while after you get the platform out there to work with developers to get the momentum going."

Microsoft has updated its Windows App Studio tools for people who want to make Windows 10 apps without the need for any coding. The new version includes a WordPress data source that allows people with a WordPress blog to pull content from it so it can be shown in a Windows 10 app.

Intel recently released an update to its RealSense SDK tools, with a number of improvements for its 3D camera technology. It includes improvements in facial tracking and recognition and also supports the company's upcoming RealSense SR300 camera that will be released in 2016.

Microsoft is now making public preview versions of its Speaker Recognition and Video APIs available from its Project Oxford machine learning. The new tools will allow developers to add speech recognition features in their apps, along with automatically editing video clips.

Microsoft has added more features for Windows Store app developers via a Dev Center update. One of them allows app creators to schedule special sales for in-app purchases that can start and end automatically.

As promised, Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 for software developers, This first major content update of its software development tools includes improvements for making apps for the company's Universal Windows Platform.